


Coffee and Emotions Shouldn't Mix (In My Opinion)

by Tsukuyomi_chan



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Cafe AU, Datastorm December 2018, M/M, barely mentioned fantasy elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-17 00:14:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16964145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tsukuyomi_chan/pseuds/Tsukuyomi_chan
Summary: Yusaku works at a café and tries his best to avoid all human emotions.  Life never goes how he wants it to though.





	Coffee and Emotions Shouldn't Mix (In My Opinion)

**Author's Note:**

> This was drawn from parts of some fantasy au that I only half planned out and was never guaranteed to actually write, so might as well consider this a café au cause its close enough. I wrote this instead of studying for my finals, which start tomorrow. Rip.
> 
> All you in the Vrains fandom make such good fanwork and I feel bad for not doing anything so I wanted to at least get something out for this week dedicated to two losers in Yugioh Vrains who are incapable of properly communicating with each other so accept my feeble offering of Yusaku trying to run away from human emotions in a café.

A white-haired man comes by Café Nagi one Thursday afternoon, at 2pm exactly.

It’s a quiet Thursday.  The Café’s busy hours are at breakfast, lunch, and the afterschool rush, and Kusanagi’s always out during this hour to get extra supplies and ingrediants, so there’s no one else in the Café when the man walks in.  The bell above the door wakes him, so Yusaku lifts his head and looks up from the counter blearily, since this is usually when he takes his afternoon nap.  Once he confirms it isn’t Kusanagi coming back from grabbing more supplies he rubs the sleep out of his eyes best he can and stands up in preparation.

The man is tall, firmly built to the point where Yusaku can make out the muscles under his shirt, and has snowy-white hair with blue streaks and steel blue eyes that settle on him as the man walks over.  His gaze is intense, and he walks with the confidence of a leader.  His white hair seems to sparkle with the flecks of sunlight settling in it.

It pulls at something in Yusaku’s heart, memories of a boy from ten years ago that he could never see again.

“One black coffee and two of those scones.”  The man says, pointing at the pastries behind the glass display next to the counter.  Yusaku nods, then silently goes about putting the two scones in a paper bag and preparing a cup of coffee in a plastic cup.  He puts the items down on the counter, then watches as the man pays with a fancy credit card that he doesn’t recognize. 

Yusaku supposes this would be the time to say ‘Please come again’, like Ai was always teasing him about doing.  But Ai is in the back sleeping, Kusanagi is out, and currently the only ones in the café are him and the white-haired man.  So he feels no need to start acting like a good employee now, considering his attitude with all other customers.

At least the man doesn’t seem to mind, collecting the items he paid for and heading for the door. 

“Thank you.”  The man says.  His voice is deep, rich, and Yusaku’s stomach does a flip at the sound of it.

Yusaku watches the man leave.  He watches the figure of the man disappear into the streets among others, long after the door shut after him, and feels an odd pang in his chest about it.

Kusanagi comes back five minutes later, so Yusaku quickly busies himself with sorting through and putting away all the new ingredients instead of lingering on the man.

 

Yusaku works part time at Café Nagi, because Kusanagi was willing to give him money for it, and because it served as a convenient cover for their other activities.  They had been searching for the truth of an incident that happened ten years ago, where six kids had been taken away and tortured and experimented on for the purpose of creating the 25th spiritual realm, the Cyberse.  Although progress had been slow until a year ago, when Yusaku had found Ai in an alleyway.  Ai was helpful, occasionally, when he wasn’t annoying.

Yusaku had stopped going to school a while ago, although Kusanagi often said he should go back.  He spent most of his time now working or sleeping in the empty café or trying to figure out anything from Ai.  Ai also nagged him about acting more like a normal kid instead of a robot though, so there was rarely anything useful coming out of his mouth. 

“You’ve been quiet today.”  Kusanagi says, at 9pm when they’re cleaning up the café to close it down for the day.

Yusaku furrows his brow, and Kusanagi chuckles.  “Well, quieter than usual, I would say.  Like something’s on your mind.”

The sound of the white-haired man’s voice echoes through his mind from earlier today, and Yusaku hates how bothered he is by it.  “Just thinking about Hanoi.”  Yusaku says.

“I see.”  Kusanagi says, and Yusaku goes back to sweeping crumbs into a dustpan, then dumping it into the trashcan.  The sound of Ai humming some ridiculous drama theme song while he counts the money in the cash register is annoying but familiar, and it fills the silence comfortably.  He hopes that Kusanagi believed him, but also sincerely doubts it.

“You can take a break, Yusaku.  I can clean up the rest.”  Kusanagi says.

Yusaku is reluctant to part with the mindless activity of cleaning that had been doing a wonderful job of keeping his mind from thinking about what had happened earlier today, but Kusanagi has that disapproving older brother look on his face that Yusaku hates to be under, so he nods.  He grabs Ai and heads to the back to get started on tonight’s surveillance instead of any sort of rest where he’d be left alone with his thoughts though.

He’s worked tirelessly for years, he’s not about to start resting now.

 

Then man shows up again a week later, at the exact same time as last time.

Not that Yusaku paid that much attention to the time the man had shown up.

The café is empty once again except for the two of them.  The shared TV hung at the back of the café lounge is currently on a news channel talking about some new SOL Technology device that will be coming out soon.  When his eyes land on the screen, the man’s eyes seem to narrow.  But Yusaku doesn’t have that much time to ponder the man’s secret grudge with either the television or with SOL Technology’s new overpriced devices that the school kids will definitely be buying and showing off to each other when they come by.

The man strolls up to the counter again with confidence, the corner of his mouth curled up in what might be considered a light smirk.  Yusaku supposes that the way the man’s looking at him would be considered handsome, enough to make a crowd of teenage girls swoon.  Unfortunately for the man, he seems to not have realized that it’s only Yusaku in the café, and there’s no point in trying to impress someone like Yusaku.

“One café au lait and two scones.”  He announces.  Yusaku raises an eyebrow at how the drink has changed from last week, but goes about preparing in the same manner as last time: in silence.  He puts the drink down with the paper bag of scones and shoves it across the counter to the man.  The man pays with the same fancy credit card as last time, then picks up the items to leave.

Before he leaves, the man smiles at him, one side of his mouth tilting upwards and the edges around his steely blue eyes softening.  "Thank you."  He says, somehow quieter and sounding ten times more intimate than last week, and Yusaku forgets to breathe until the man is fully out of the café.  Yusaku finds himself unable to look away as the man disappears into the streets and out of sight. 

What even was that?

"Oh, Yusaku-chan!  You have a crush or something?" 

That snaps Yusaku out of his reverie, and he turns to see Ai sticking his head through the open back door to mock him, a disgustingly gleeful look on his face.  Yusaku marches over and pushes Ai back, then nearly slams the door shut on him. 

"Shut up.  I’ll lock you in there."  He says, then stomps back to the counter to start cleaning off the coffee machine.

 

The man shows up next week as well.

The moment Yusaku sees him step through the door, he begins to grab two scones from behind the display and puts them into a paper bag as per usual.  He dumps the bag on the counter unceremoniously, then looks up at the man and waits for him to announce whatever drink he wants this week.  The man seems surprised by the action.

“You remembered my order?”  The man asks, and Yusaku realizes that this is the only order that he’s bothered remembering in his two years of working here.  It was always something Kusanagi said was ‘good service’ or whatever, remembering regular customers, but this was only the third time the man had even come by. 

“You’re the only one that comes by at this time.”  Yusaku says, the excuse feeling lame in his mouth.  But it does make the man smile, a sincere smile, eyes crinkling around the edges and mouth in a small fond smile, and the sun shining through the open glass door giving his hair an almost golden tint doesn’t help whatever new feeling is threatening to crawl through Yusaku’s chest and make his heart burst. 

“That’s the first time you’ve spoken to me.”  The man says.

It is.  There’s something about the man that’s comforting, where Yusaku wants to keep listening to the man talk, even if it means trying to hold a conversation with him.  It’s a foreign feeling.  “I see.”  Yusaku replies.

“I’ll have a mocha latte with those.”  The man says once it becomes obvious that Yusaku isn’t going to say anything else, and Yusaku welcomes the excuse to completely look away from the man and busy himself in something else altogether.  He prepares the drink, his grip a little too tight on the plastic cup, before he finally puts it down on the counter for the man.

“Here.”  Yusaku mutters, deciding to focus on watching the man’s hand as it taps the credit card to the card machine.  The man’s fingers are long and slender and graceful, and although it’s embarrassing to think about, it’s much better than making eye contact with the man at this point.  He can feel the man’s gaze on him, those blue eyes boring into him, and Yusaku can feel himself starting to flush under it.

The man finally takes his items, and Yusaku mentally breathes out a sigh of relief.  But the man stares at him for a few seconds, and Yusaku realizes his sight is directed at the name tag Yusaku’s wearing.  He often forgets he’s wearing it often, since pretty much everyone else also does.

“Thank you, Yusaku.”  The man says, and there’s something about the way he says Yusaku’s name that makes his face heat up and his body start shaking.  It’s definitely visible, definitely obvious, and the smirk the man has before he walks out just makes Yusaku flush harder. 

Oh, this needed to stop.

 

Ten years ago, Yusaku was saved by a boy with white hair.

Ten years ago, a white-haired boy would occasionally sneak into the tiny cell Yusaku had been kept in when he wasn’t being experimented on.  The boy would bring him food and water, and tell him to not give up yet.  The boy told him to cling to hope by counting to three.  The boy promised that he’d be able to go home soon.

Ten years ago, when the kingdom’s royal guard finally broke into whatever facility they had been kept in, the boy opened the cells of the six children and led them outside.  The boy held Yusaku’s hand as he lead them through the winding hallways of the facility, and when they finally made it outside, the boy told them to stay there, then disappeared back into the facility.  The royal guard found them a while later, the six of them huddled together, and when Yusaku had looked back at the facility for where the boy had gone, it was on fire.  The entire facility was on fire.  The place that tortured Yusaku for months burnt to the ground, along with the only person Yusaku had ever considered a friend.

So whatever this weird thing he’s feeling, these involuntary physical reactions, must just be a side effect of that.  Ten years of debt and gratitude to someone he could never meet again, manifesting in the form of a man who eerily resembled the ghost of his past.  He wasn’t capable of achieving something so normal as a functioning human relationship anymore.  So these weird feelings needed to stop.

 

The next Thursday, at 1:30pm, Ai pokes his head out of the backdoor and leers at him.  “You waiting for the pretty guy?”

Yusaku bristles, putting down the towel he had been using to wipe down the countertop.  “You’re not supposed to come out during the day.”

“No one comes by during this hour!  Kusanagi’s out getting supplies too!  So it’s going to be just the two of you!”  Ai says, completely forgoing any subtlety and floating out from behind the door, landing on the counter in front of Yusaku.  He seems to have forgotten that just a year ago the entire kingdom had been searching for him, and they still were, with the addition of some terrorist organization trying to kill him.  But that’s Ai’s death wish, not Yusaku’s.  “You exciiiited~?”

Yusaku drops the dirty towel on Ai’s head, then marches over to the sink to grab another.  Ai flails around for a while before finally getting it off of its body, and Yusaku goes back to wiping down the machinery, his back facing Ai.  “Oi!  What are you doing to Ai-sama, one of the great guardian spirits of Cyberse!”  Ai shouts, throwing the towel back at Yusaku.  But that was very predictable, and the towel is three times Ai’s physical size, so Yusaku catches the towel easily and goes right back to wiping without missing a beat.

“You know, Yusaku-chan.  You’re sixteen.  You should let yourself do things sixteen year olds do.”  Ai says.

It’s rare that Ai actually wants to have a proper conversation with him, so Yusaku turns around to look at him, crossing his arms as he watches Ai settle on the counter edge and swing his legs back and forth.

“What is that supposed to mean?”  Yusaku frowns. 

Ai gives him a large grin.  “It means if he asks you out on a date, you should say yes!”

“Hah?!”  Yusaku feels his face flush involuntarily again as he stares at Ai.  It takes a few seconds of him resenting Ai’s gleeful face before he manages to say something to explain why that’s a terrible idea.  “I don’t have time for that.  I have work to do.”  At day, it was helping Kusanagi manage this café.  And at night it was hunting down the Knights of Hanoi.  That left zero free hours.

“You work too much.  I know Kusanagi agrees with me!  Tell him you have a date and he’ll gladly give you a few days off!”

Yusaku scowls at Ai, but Ai’s right.  But Yusaku wouldn’t be able to rest properly until he found out the truth of ten years ago.  “I don’t need to go on a date.”  He mutters.  Just like how he didn’t need to make friends. 

Not after what happened to his first friend.  His only friend.

“Yusaku-chan…”  Ai moans, glaring at him.  “You should let yourself be happy every once in a while.”

Something claws at Yusaku’s heart, the memories of painful experiments from ten years ago still sharp in his mind.  It’s been ten years.  He understands that the entire experiment was the fault of those who conducted it.  He resents those who conducted it, hates them to the point where anger drives him through all exhaustion, makes his skin crawl and his blood boil.  But still the nagging thought that hasn’t left him for ten years remains, the thought that maybe the six of them had done something wrong, to deserve something like that.  The thought that normality, that happiness wasn’t something that they were meant to achieve.

Yusaku looks down at his hands, at the faint burn marks from the constant electrocution marring them that had faded but would always remain.  They were nothing like that man’s hands, so pretty and slender and clean.  They were completely different. 

“I’d make him unhappy.”  Yusaku says quietly.  “Him being around me, it would make him unhappy.”

“You don’t know that.”

Ai slinks away to the back again, leaving Yusaku to go back to cleaning in silence. 

At 2pm, the man arrives again. 

Yusaku has the two scones in a paper bag before the man even walks through the door, but he can’t bring himself to look at the man properly.  Ai’s words bounce around in his head, bothering him more than anything else Ai’s ever done.  He’s done just fine up until now without trying to pursue an unobtainable happiness.  He can cut out these feelings, gouge them out of his system like all the others.

“An Americano with those.”  The man says, and Yusaku prepares it without a word and without looking at the man.  The only sounds are the coffee machine’s whirring, the quiet news reporter on the TV, and the man’s foot tapping impatiently.  Usually he’d enjoy the peaceful quiet, but today it just feels tense.  Yusaku puts the drink down with the paper bag on the counter and waits for the man to pay.

“Are you going back to not talking again?”  The man says with a slight frown. 

“That’ll be four thirty-five.”  Yusaku says dully, and the man frowns further.

“You know that’s not what I mean.”  The man says, frustrated, running a hand through his hair.  “I thought we were getting along last week.”

Yusaku remembers last week, remembers the way the man had said his name, and his stomach begins to churn with unknown feelings again.  “You don’t have to get along with me.  I’ll make your drinks either way.”  Yusaku finally says.

“That is not the point of trying to get along with you.”  The man is visibly frustrated now, which Yusaku could consider a plus in his quest to make his own weird feelings disappear.  He’s used to people getting frustrated at him for not acting normal enough.

“There is no other logical reason.”  Yusaku says, and it seems that’s enough to completely anger the man.

“There are tons!”  The man practically shouts.

“Like what?”  Yusaku can’t help but shoot back, looking straight at the man now with a challenge in his eyes.

The man grits his teeth, as if holding back whatever he was going to shout back, reconsidering it.  He takes a deep breath, and his blue eyes settle on Yusaku with conviction.

“Do you want to go on a date?”

Yusaku feels as if his heart stops for a second, before its beating a mile a minute in his ears.  The man is glaring right at him, his cheeks slightly pink, and his tone seems almost too aggressive for asking someone out on a date, but that’s the farthest thing from Yusaku’s mind as Yusaku tries to furiously process exactly what has happened over the course of the past few weeks that led to him of all people being asked on a date without his face overheating.

One: A really pretty white-haired man with a soothing voice starts coming to the café.

Two: Yusaku isn’t built to handle people that look this much like the ghosts of ten years ago haunting him.

Three: The pretty white-haired man was currently here in the café, asking him out on a date.  And he’s just staring back, not saying anything.

His mouth moves, but no words come out, like he’s a fish gasping at air.  His face his hot, all the way to the tips of his ears, and it’s definitely messing with his ability to think. 

“Why.”  He struggles to say.

“Because I want to.  And well,” The man pauses, his eyes shifting away, “I thought maybe you did too.”

Did he?  Yusaku doesn’t even understand anymore, if those had been the feelings clinging to him, clawing at him these past weeks.  Ai’s annoying voice comes to mind.  Telling him to take a break.  To be happy.

The white-haired boy from ten years ago, telling him to not give up, to cling to hope.  His saviour.  His only friend.  He had told Yusaku it was alright to hope.

“I don’t know anything about you.”  Yusaku finally says, quietly.  And recognition dawns on the man’s eyes, as if this was the problem all along. 

“That’s the point of a date.  To get to know the other person.”  The man says, his stance relaxing.  “And to spend time with them.” 

Yusaku wants that.  It suddenly crashes into Yusaku how tired he is, how long it’s been since anyone’s actually spent time with him in a relaxing, not work related way.  He wants to know the man more, to hear more of his voice, to not feel so alone.  He wants to hope a little.

“I’m Fujiki Yusaku.”  Yusaku says.  “I’ll go on a date with you.”

The man’s eyes widen in surprise, and he smiles and laughs and Yusaku thinks that he wants to spend forever just looking at that smile, listening to his laugh.  “It’s a bit of a late introduction.  My name is Kogami Ryoken.”  Ryoken smiles at him.  “I look forwards to our date then, Fujiki Yusaku.”

**Author's Note:**

> Do I regret writing this instead of studying? A bit. Hope you enjoyed it at least.


End file.
